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The choice was between sitting in her room and drinking alone and coming here, and now that she’s here Max really wishes she’d picked the other option.
Other people are too loud. The music pulses against her eardrums. The bar isn’t very crowded—why would it be, on a Wednesday night?—but it’s still far too crowded for her tastes. Arcadia Bay is a small enough town that the bartender probably knows full well she’s underage, but he didn’t even bother carding her. She’s stopped getting nervous when she hands people her fake ID. Chloe would be so proud. But then again, maybe she does look the age; she feels as if she’s aged years and years since she killed her best friend. And in this reality, her face was never plastered all over the news for helping save Kate from splattering into nothing on the pavement.
An everyday hero. What a fucking joke.
Max doesn’t really care for hard alcohol at all, but the point isn’t to enjoy herself, so she keeps downing disgusting sips of Long Island iced tea even as it feels like it’s scorching her throat. She can’t tell if she’s feeling anything. All she feels is an angry sort of numbness. It’s been months since the week from Hell, and all she can feel is an angry sort of numbness.
It’s better to be at a bar, to be out in public. She supposes her own company is dangerous for her. When she sits in her room, the walls feel like they’re closing in. She took down all her pictures, rearranged her furniture, sold her photography books online just to stop flinching every time she looked at them. It doesn’t really help, though. The horror is inside of her.
“Hey. Can I buy you another one?”
Max sighs very audibly. She’s wearing ratty jeans, sneakers, and a t-shirt, and she doesn’t think she’s worn makeup in weeks, but apparently that’s not enough to signal she’s not interested. The man who’s slid into the seat beside her is easily ten years older than her. He might be okay-looking if it weren’t for the smirk, if she were capable at all of feeling interest in anyone else anymore.
They’re fucking together in heaven. Is that what you want to hear?
Now she’s jealous of dead Rachel Amber. Way to go, Max.
“No,” she says. She doesn’t even look at him.
“Don’t be like that. What’s your name?”
“Aki Ross.” Max chuckles a little bit at her own joke, even though it isn’t funny. Why won’t he leave her alone? Surely there’s some other girl in this bar who looks in need of company.
“Are you laughing at me?” His tone shifts. Max turns to look at him. He isn’t smiling any longer. She could smash her glass into his head, then rewind if things turned hairy. No. She can’t. She hasn’t tried. She’s lasted this long. She’s not going to break over something this stupid. If she fucks up time again, Chloe died for nothing.
“I saved your life,” she says, glaring not at him but at all of them, all of this, this stupid shitty bar and this stupid shitty town. She saved all of them, and for what? The memory of a gunshot rips through her head.
Nobody would even miss your punk ass, would they?
Nobody will notice when she goes missing tonight, or care.
Don’t you dare forget me, Max.
“What are you talking about?” The smile is back, but it’s still aggressive. He’s leaning into her space. Max wants to hit him. What would it matter if she did?
“She’s obviously not interested, jackass,” a cold voice interrupts him, and suddenly there is a thin arm on the bar between Max and the gentleman. For an instant Max’s heartbeat skips, and she dares to imagine that she will look up and see blue hair. She keeps imagining it, has been for the past months. Chloe will come in the door, smiling, reappear in Max’s life just as Max reappeared in hers.
But the fantasy can only last a brief instant, and Max is all the worse for it when she looks into the face of someone she really doesn’t want to see.
“Come on, Max,” Victoria Chase says impatiently. Max looks between her and the man, and the choice is reluctant but it’s not really a choice at all. With a last, forlorn look at her not-quite-empty drink, Max stands and lets Victoria guide her out of the bar.
When they’re outside, Max sags against the wall. She feels tired enough that she could lay down then and there. It’s cold, and she’s wishing she’d brought something warmer than her jacket. Victoria’s wearing a skirt and tights, but she doesn’t look chilled.
“You’re a fucking wreck,” Victoria says. Her voice is somewhere between pity and disgust.
“Leave me alone.” Max rubs her eyes. When she looks at Victoria, she sees her lying on a cold white floor, her hands duct-taped together, her voice high and terrified. “Thanks for the help. I’m fine.”
“You’re obviously not fine. You’re drinking alone on a Wednesday, and you look like shit. You’ve looked like shit for weeks.”
Max doesn’t need to hear that. She goes to class. She’s been doing fine. She has to keep her grades up, has to do that at least or her parents will ask even more questions. The rest doesn’t matter. She sees how people look at her. She has absolutely no explanation for the state she is in, and that is the worst part of all, because in this world she hasn’t been threatened by Nathan Prescott, sedated and photographed and nearly killed by a man she once idolized, hasn’t spent a week with her best friend only to be faced with the worst decision of her life.
Here, she’s just Max Caulfield, weird hipster girl. She sat with Kate and tried to find some way to say she knew how it felt. She read about Mark Jefferson in the newspapers and knew that in this timeline, he hadn’t killed anybody, or at least nobody she knew.
This week was real, Chloe had said. But it wasn’t. Not really. Max is the only one left. The only person who understood died months ago on a cold bathroom floor.
“Max, I get it.” Victoria sounds, or at least seems to be trying to sound, more sympathetic, but there’s still an edge of impatience to her voice. “Mr. Jefferson was my teacher too, okay? And you know they found a binder with my name on it in that sick bunker. Nathan was my best friend, and now if I want to see him he’s wearing handcuffs. How do you think that feels?”
“You are so—” Max’s voice cuts off into something that might be a laugh or a sob, and then she’s crying for real. Victoria doesn’t get it. She has no idea. Nobody has any fucking idea, and Max is alone with her memories.
“And I’m sorry about your friend,” Victoria continues. She steps closer and reaches a hand out awkwardly for Max’s shoulder. “That’s…”
“Yeah, your best friend shot her,” Max manages. She’s bent double against the hard wall. The sobs keep coming. It hurts. Her head is spinning. She wants to drink more. She wants to drink until she falls asleep, temporarily or not. “I made the wrong choice. I must have—”
“Max?” Victoria sounds either alarmed or very weirded out, but her face is now just a pale blob through Max’s tears. Still, Max can feel her arms when they wrap about her, and the embrace is solid and real and warm enough, close enough to the one she remembers and craves, that she breaks down completely.